topic Re: Mirror disk error in Operating System - HP-UX

Mirror disk error

usarmy — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 14:52:55 GMT

RX3600 Itanium running HPUX 11.23 replaced root drive with larger drive using Ignite two step process, also added another new SAS drive to use as mirror. When running the mirror commands at the vgextend portion got this error:

VGCFGBACKUP: Invalid LVMREC on physical volume /dev/rdsk/c11t1d0 (the mirror disk)

now lvstatus command shows disk as available/stale

Not sure where to go from here any ideas ? Is the mirror salvageable or If needed how would I delete all the mirror changes and start mirror process over?

The attachment has errors in syslog.

Thanks

Re: Mirror disk error

Torsten. — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:04:53 GMT

You probably did something wrong.

Did you use the mirror procedure for Integrity servers?

Remember, the data disk is something like c1t2d0s2 - the "s2" is most important!

Re: Mirror disk error

Ken Grabowski — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:05:22 GMT

Are the two drives the same size? What commands did you use on the SAS drive to prepaid it before adding it to the mirror?

lvreduce can be used to remove mirrored PE's from the SAS drive. The lvreduce man page has excellent command line examples.

Re: Mirror disk error

Ken Grabowski — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:15:10 GMT

The "Not LVM Disk" makes me wonder if you ran pvcreate on the disk before adding it to the volume group with lvextend.

As Torsten said... If you are adding this disk to vg00 on an IA64 system, you need to create the EFI partitions and matching those when mirroring the lv's. Look at the "Mirroring the Boot Disk" section of the "HP-UX System Administrator's Guide: Logical Volume Management HP-UX 11i Version 3" manual. I gave you the link the last time.

Re: Mirror disk error

Torsten. — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:58:35 GMT

First you should solve this problem:

Jul 25 19:43:45 mspfodb vmunix: sasd: [ALERT] Driver detected a software downgra
de.
Jul 25 19:43:45 mspfodb vmunix: sasd: The current driver version is unsupported
Jul 25 19:43:45 mspfodb vmunix: sasd: for the Serial SCSI HBA at hw path 0/4/1/0
.
Jul 25 19:43:45 mspfodb vmunix: sasd:Please install the latest SerialSCSI-00 depot ASAP.

Re: Mirror disk error

usarmy — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 18:39:27 GMT

Torsten

Not sure what that sasd error is, but I'm preparing this system to upgrade to 11.31 from 11.23 next week so I'm not sure that warning is a problem. I'm attaching output from vgdisplay and my lvmtab file and a ioscan I have compared the ioscan from before and they are exactly the same.. On other posts I keep seeing where removing lvmtab and running vgscan has resolved similar issues what do you think? The following is the exact mirror process i followed this process was used 4 years ago when this system was initialized without problems.

MIRROR DISK STEPS.

Create idf file to load
vi /tmp/idf
3
EFI 500MB
HPUX 100%
HPSP 400MB

#idisk -wf /tmp/idf /dev/rdsk/c11t1d0

#idisk /dev/rdsk/c11t1d0

#insf -eC disk

#ioscan -kfnC disk

#mkboot -e -l /dev/rdsk/c11t1d0

#efi_ls -d /dev/rdsk/c11t1d0s1

#mkboot -a "boot vmunix -lq" /dev/rdsk/c11t0d0

#mkboot -a "boot vmunix -lq" /dev/rdsk/c11t1d0

#efi_cp -d /dev/rdsk/c11t1d0s1 -u /efi/hpux/auto /dev/console

#efi_cp -d /dev/rdsk/c11t0d0s1 -u /efi/hpux/auto /dev/console

#pvcreate -fB /dev/rdsk/c11t1d0s2

#vgextend /dev/vg00 /dex/dsk/c11t1d0s2

#vgdisplay -v vg00 | grep "PV Name"

#for lv in /dev/vg00/lvol* ; do lvextend -m 1 $lv ; done

#lvlnboot -R

#lvlnboot -v

#vi /stand/bootconf
l /dev/dsk/c11t0d0s2
l /dev/dsk/c11t1d0s2

#dd if=/dev/dsk/c11t0d0s3 of=/dev/dsk/c11t1d0s3

#setboot -p 0/4/1/0.0.0.0.0

#setboot -h 0/4/1/0.0.0.1.0

setboot

Re: Mirror disk error

Torsten. — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 04:44:45 GMT

I see several problems:

- your procedure has missing steps, e.g. "efi_fsinit ..."

- your lvmtab is wrong:

/dev/vg00
/dev/dsk/c11t0d0s2
/dev/dsk/c11t1d0
/dev/dsk/c11t1d0s2

I would do something totally different:

- backup with ignite

- create a hardware RAID1 using ORCA

- restore the OS to this RAID

Reason: you already know that mirroring is not that simple, but a disk replacement because of a failed disk with hp-ux 11.31 and SAS disks is even more complicated, but if you have a hardware RAID, you just swap the disks.

Re: Mirror disk error

Ken Grabowski — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:27:36 GMT

Interestingly the new Mirror Boot Disk procedures from HP do not include the efi_fsinit command or any others that army didn't use. So I wouldn't be to sure their absence is an issue. However the extra disk reference in lvmtab is an issue, especially since vgdisplay doesn't match lvmtab.

To fix lvmtab:

cd /etc
mv lvmtab lvmtab.bak
vgscan -av

Torsten has a good suggestion about using the internal SAS controller to create the RAID 1 mirror of the boot disk. Early RX series servers came from the factory with no controller level RAID's configured, just the OS on a single disk and all the other disk showing as unused individual disks. Later factory installs came with the OS installed on a single logical disk configured in a RAID 1 at the controller. When I rebuilt older RX servers I used the opportunity to make the change to the controller level RAID 1 boot. If you have the ability to rebuild this server, I would do it.

Your preparing for an OS upgrade from 11.23 to 11.31. While HP provides an upgrade in place utility and procedure, the preferred and recommended approach is to build a new install of 11.31 and migrate your application(s) to it. If you have enough systems to be able to do that, I would build new, and make the SAS control RAID change at that time.

Re: Mirror disk error

usarmy — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:18:08 GMT

Torsten/Ken

You both have very good ideas but a Higher Headquarters controls my systems config and stupidity is the boss, there are 54 of these and all are on the same baseline. I was able to kill this system after playing with LVM commands all day. This morning I reran two step ignite and now have a system running I'll try the mirror procedure again tonight. I'm concerned about the Ignite version mismatch I have 7.2.94 on my system/Ignite tape but the OE 11.23 HPUX CD i have has 7.4.155 It gives me a dire warning but will continue and build a new VG00 on my new disk. Talked to HP support and they laughed when I asked where can I get 7.4.155 so I'm not sure what to do about that.

I was able to to look at a backup of /etc/lvmtab from before i replaced the disks and mirroring was working and it has the S2 at the end of both of these device files. My VG00 section in /etc/lvmtab looks like this now (PRE MIRROR) . So it appears when I ran those mirror commands I added c11t1d0s2 I think the c11t1d0 is the problem Any Ideas would br greatly appreciated.

emspfodb@/etc>strings lvmtab | pg
/dev/vg00
/dev/dsk/c11t0d0s2
/dev/dsk/c11t1d0

Re: Mirror disk error

Ken Grabowski — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:43:29 GMT

Being at ARNG-IMS-P I understand your limitations. None the less, it's still the recommended approach, if you have the machines and the consent. You can always try and sell them on the "Golden Image" approach for creating and maintaining the baseline. Good luck!

The lvmtab fix I gave you is what you want to run before trying your procedure for adding a mirror again.

Ignite is always putting out new updates and you always have to go around and bring all the systems up to the same level. Most of the time ignite lets you continue on with your work with only a warning, but sometimes it will refuse. Make a practice of aligning the Ignite software release on your systems at the same time, or as close together as you can. Make sure you check for updates when you do patching, and make sure you cover all your systems.